California Takes Controversial Approach to Fentanyl Crisis

By now the statistics are familiar: Fentanyl is killing Americans at an unprecedented rate—around 73,000 annually. For those aged 18 to 45, it is the leading cause of death. And it’s everywhere—tainting counterfeit pills, poisoning children and adults, addicts and first-time users, overwhelming any potential response. As a deluge of pills and powder flows across the southern border, authorities regularly seize enough fentanyl to kill everyone on earth, several times over. Into this carnage, a windfall. Nationwide, more than $50 billion is expected to flow from legal settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors over the next two decades—with California in line to receive about $4 billion, divvied up among the state and local governments....